What a New Hampshire divorce actually costs to file.
Not a range, not an estimate, not a lawyer’s blog. Every figure below is traced to a statute, a court fee schedule, or a clerk’s own published page — and linked to it.
See a different stateNew Hampshire
It costs $280.00 to file for divorce in New Hampshire. Below is where that money goes, what it does not cover, and what to do if you do not have it.
Worth knowing before you file. New Hampshire is one of the few states that prices a divorce differently when there are children — and the difference is two dollars.
Where the money goes
New Hampshire does not break this down
The published figures are totals — the schedule states no surcharge is added on top.
What the filing fee does not cover
The filing fee is usually the smallest predictable number in a divorce. This is where the rest of the budget lives — and where “not published” appears most often.
Nothing extra to e-file
We looked for a portal fee and a card surcharge in New Hampshire and found neither published. That is not the same as a guarantee — clerks can charge for things they do not put on a web page — but there is no extra charge we can point you at. Whether you have to e-file at all is on the New Hampshire kit.
| Cost | Amount |
|---|---|
| Petition to change a court order, with full agreementPost-judgment. | $135.00 |
| Petition to change a court order without full agreement, or petition for contemptPost-judgment. | $225.00 |
| New orders of noticePost-judgment. | $25.00 |
If you cannot afford to file
More people qualify than apply. If this section applies to you it is the most useful thing on this page.
New Hampshire has a way to file without paying up front
This is a normal court procedure, not a favor you have to plead for.
- What it covers: The filing fee, in whole or part.
- How it works: Written or electronic request to the court to pay a lower fee or file for free, with a statement of financial circumstances.
What we could not find out
Open questions on this page
- An automated extraction of the same PDF URL returns a stale December 2021 version showing $250/$252. The live PDF is stamped 07/01/2025 and shows $280/$282. The ‘2021-06’ in the URL path is a Drupal upload folder, not an effective date.
We would rather show you a blank than a plausible number. Everything above is a real limit on what New Hampshire’s own agencies publish, not an omission on our part.
How we know this
Every figure on this page came from a statute, a state court system, or a clerk’s own published fee schedule — never a law firm’s blog, a legal-forms company, or a fee aggregator. Where a state publishes no date on its fee schedule, we say so rather than implying the number is current. Where nothing is published, we leave it blank.
Court fees change, and they change without announcement. Confirm with your clerk before you write the check.
What people actually report paying
Everything above is the filing fee, traced to the statute. It is also the smallest number in a divorce. Here is the other side of it — and a warning about how to read it.
We read hundreds of public accounts from people who have been through it. Three findings held up across nearly all of them:
- The total is bimodal, not an average. Self-filers cluster around $300–$500. Anyone with two lawyers and a real disagreement clusters around $20,000–$30,000. Almost nobody reports the middle, so “the average divorce costs X” describes almost no actual divorce.
- Cost is driven by the other person’s conduct, not by how complicated your assets are. People with millions who agreed to split evenly reported paying filing fees only. People with one house and one child reported $45,000 because the case got dragged out.
- Every large surprise is a third professional. The guardian ad litem, the custody evaluator, the forensic accountant, the QDRO preparer — all billed separately from both lawyers, and often introduced by the court before anyone had budgeted for one.
These are anecdotes, not prices. People post about a divorce cost when the number shocked them, so the high figures are heavily over-represented and the ordinary divorce is nearly invisible. Every figure on the full page is labeled with how many people reported it.
See what people report paying →Know someone in New Hampshire staring at this number?
A straight answer about money is more useful than most advice, and it costs nothing to pass along. Nothing here asks for their real name, and nobody finds out they looked.
Now the part the fees don’t cover
The forms, the deadlines, the residency rule, and what actually happens next.
Or find someone to help
New Hampshire attorneys, mediators, CDFAs and therapists, credentials checked against the state’s own records. Nobody paid to be there.
The rest of what we have written about New Hampshire. Every figure is quoted from New Hampshire’s own statute or its courts’ own published schedule, and carries the date we last checked it.